Wikileaks
Wikileaks is a website dedicated to informing the public with classified government information. The website allows for the public to be aware of the hidden agenda of the government. This act is viewed as an expression of our freedom of speech. Wikileaks provides a reliable source for Americans to educate their selves about the actions of their government. It offers a transparent view of the government, and allows Americans to be whistleblowers on unreasonable issues administered by the government. Wikileaks should be allowed to release government information because it aids in providing citizens with the knowledge of important information they may not have been aware of otherwise.
Citizens of this country have the right to know about important government information. It is their constitutional right to know and to have knowledge about plans and activities the government is involved in. The opposing side might say the information wikileaks releases are unreliable and untruthful. They might also attempt to say that the information is released as an act to defame our national government. An article written by Declan Walsh about a false statement made in Pakistani newspapers about Indian generals sated by U.S. officials supports the opposing side’s argument. The article stated that the Indian generals were vain, geeky, and engaged in genocide against Muslims in Kashmir. This article later was discovered to be a fraudulent article planted on Wikileaks to degrade the integrity of the website. Wikileaks did not try to defame our government. The individuals who do not support Wikileaks are the ones that tried to defame the government in order to corrupt the truthfulness of the Wikileaks website. To the opposing...
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...ee with everything their government says. It allows for the people to see proper documentations so they can judge for their selves whether the actions of their government are just and reasonable and whether the government is upholding a proper democracy.
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Work Cited
Cary, Mary. “The Real Wikileaks Threat”. USNews.com, 9 December 2010.Web. 10 April 2011.
Hansen, Evan. “Why Wikileaks is good for America”. Wired.com, 6 December 2010. Web. 3
April 2011.
Kennedy, Dan. “WikiLeaks and the first amendment”. Guardian.co.uk, 16 December 2010.
Web. 3April 2011.
Walsh, Delcan. “WikiLeaks fake cables Pakistani newspapers admit they were hoaxed”.
Guardian.co.uk, 10 December 2010. Web. 3 April 2011.
Quigley, Bill. “Why wikileaks is good for democracy”. Huffingtonpost.com, 30 November 2010.
Web. 10 April 2011
Julian Assange’s website, WikiLeaks made global headlines in the last few years. Assange started out by leaking documents he had acquired over the internet about banks in various European countries. Chelsea Manning, Army Private at the time stationed in Iraq joined up with Assange and delivered to him thousands of classified documents that Manning, a military intelligence analyst had access to. Manning was in contact with a former hacker named Adrian Lamo who he asked advice of, advice whether or not he should leak the documents. Manning going against Lamo’s advice of not leaking the documents caused Manning to be arrested after Lamo turned him in for the leak. This was a major blow for Wikileaks who had just lost their major source of confidential documents from the United States government. Since 9/11, the United States Government has realized that information needs to be shared among intelligence agencies in order to thwart terrorist attacks. A side effect however is that information is no longer on a need-to-know basis which made it possible for Manning to leak it all out. After receiving this confidential information, Assange began to make this information available to media outlets. Assange’s actions were morally and ethically incorrect. He should not have leaked so many classified documents especially without redacting the names of informants whose lives could have been in danger. These documents leaked by Manning to Assange were meant strictly for the eyes and ears of those who were privileged to the information, not for the front page of the New York Times. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange threatened global security as they willingly and knowingly put lives of thousands at risk by allowing the bad guys an opportunity to a...
After September 11th, Americans looked to the government for protection and reassurance. However, they did not expect to find out thirteen years later that the government did this by using technology to spy on Americans, as well as other countries. George W. Bush began the policy shortly after the terrorist attack and Barack Obama continued it. There have been many confrontations over the years about the extent of the N.S.A.’s spying; however, the most recent whistle-blower, Edward Snowden, leaked information that caused much upset throughout America (EFF). It has also brought many people to question: is he a hero or a traitor?
In May of 2013 Edward Snowden who was then working at a National Security Agency office in Oahu, Hawaii began copying top secret documents that belonged to the American government as he believed the documentation contained unethical and immoral content that he believed the American people and the world in general needed to know about. (Snowden, 2014) The documentation that he collated contained information regarding projects such as Prism, which is a top secret NSA surveillance program that has the ability to access the data servers of some of America's large...
In early June 2013, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former defense contractor who had access to NSA database while working for an intelligence consulting company, leaked classified documents reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) is recording phone calls of millions of Americans along with gathering private data and spying foreign Internet activity. The Washington Post later broke the news disclosed PRISM, a program can collect data on Internet users. The leaked documents publicly stated a vast objection. Many people were shocked by the scale of the programs, even elected representatives were unaware of the surveillance range. A nationwide debate over privacy rights have been sparked. Although supporters claim that the NSA only does its best to protect the United States from terrorists as well as respecting Americans' rights and privacy, many civil rights advocates feel that the government failed to be clear about the limit of the surveillance programs, threatening Americans' civil...
Currently, Snowden’s leaks have revealed a global surveillance apparatus used by the NSA as well as Britain’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, a surveillance apparatus in the UK that conducts real time monitoring of social media networks. The exact size of Snowden's disclosure is unknown, but the following are possible: 15,000 or more Australian intelligence files, according to Australian officials9; at least 58,000 British intelligence files, according to British officials10; and roughly 1.7 million U.S. intelligence files, according to U.S. officials.11 Snowden’s leaks are unprecedented on several levels. His disclosure has been called the most significant leak in U.S. history by Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.12 Regardless of future action, the debate on the protection of...
Snowden's confession over exposing the confidential documents that reveals the NSA's surveillance program has influenced the public with different interpretation. In his interview, Snowden stated that “ The public needs to decide whether these programs, and polices are right or wrong.” The face-work of Edward Snowden provided to the public by using the free press is in a justice image of him. His stated that the disclosure of the U.S. government and NSA is to let people to see the truth and their life has been compromised. Some people perceive...
Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (N.S.A) subcontractor turned whistle-blower is nothing short of a hero. His controversial decision to release information detailing the highly illegal ‘data mining’ practices of the N.S.A have caused shockwaves throughout the world and have raised important questions concerning how much the government actually monitors its people without their consent or knowledge. Comparable to Mark Felt in the Watergate scandals, Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers, Edward Snowden joins the rank of infamous whistleblowers who gave up their jobs, livelihood, and forever will live under scrutiny of the public all in the service to the American people. Edward Snowden released information detailing the extent of the N.S.A breaches of American privacy and in doing so, became ostracized by the media and barred from freely reentering America, his home country.
The Freedom of Information Act is used mostly to pry open government files. It was designed to help individuals obtain information about the actions of government. The law proclaims that any citizen is to be given access to government records unless the disclosure involves litigation, the CIA, personal m...
...of rights and freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. “ (section 1 of the canadian charter of rights and freedom) wikileaks does not measure the risks of its publication and the effects they can cause people. legislation laws and regulation are created so that society is protected and to have a better sense of accountability. When everything is exposed to the public, chaos is bound to follow. Wikileaks jeopardizes and openly defies the right of privacy, right of accountability and confidentiality among descrete information and data and also causes inconvenience to governments, private sectors and even individuals in various walks of life. after all acts of hacking into something private is inappropriate, dangerous and illegal.
The controversy surrounding Edward Snowden has been one of the most controversial whistleblowing stories regarding the United States. Snowden is a former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, therefore he had access to a numerous amount of classified information. Working primarily with Glenn Greenwald, Snowden sent various government documents containing classified information. The top secret information that was leaked involved several ongoing mass surveillance programs of the United States government. These leaked documents exposed plans to seize and record all US and European telephone metadata as well as information from internet surveillance programs such as PRISM and Tempora. Consequently, this situation provoked many ethical dilemmas to surface. In this memo I will argue whether Edward Snowden
Most people concerned about the privacy implications of government surveillance aren’t arguing for no[sic] surveillance and absolute privacy. They’d be fine giving up some privacy as long as appropriate controls, limitations, oversight and accountability mechanisms were in place. ”(“5 Myths about Privacy”). The fight for privacy rights is by no means a recent conflict.
At the beginning of his presidency, Obama stated: “’Government should be transparent. [My] administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government’” (“The Best Disinfectant”). This promise, however, is a far cry from reality. During his seven years in office, Obama has implemented the Open Government Directive, created the National Declassification Center (NDC), and websites like data.gov, recovery.gov, and foia.gov (“The Best Disinfectant”). Despite these efforts to promote transparency, the NDC, for example, has only released a “paltry twenty-two million of four-hundred million pages of classified data. The rate of classification remains far higher than the rate of declassification” (“The Best Disinfectant”). America’s citizens and allies that had hoped for more candor within the government have been disappointed. In addition to these weak programs, the Obama administration has “indicted six whistleblowers under the Espionage Act for leaking information to the press- twice as many as all of the past administrations combined” (“The Best Disinfectant”). This proves that Obama’s promise to make the government more transparent was merely a façade that he used to gain support in his search for power. With deceitful leaders like Obama, the credibility of America can only
Privacy is not just a fundamental right, it is also important to maintain a truly democratic society where all citizens are able to exist with relative comfort. Therefore, “[Monitoring citizens without their knowledge] is a major threat to democracies all around the world.” (William Binney.) This is a logical opinion because without freedom of expression and privacy, every dictatorship in history has implemented some form of surveillance upon its citizens as a method of control.
This essay will offer a critical analysis of the 2010 WikiLeaks Controversy. For this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate different ethical standpoints of the controversy through a media case study. I will investigate if it was ethical for the media to collaborate in this agreement in order to figure out what kind of person Julian Assange was. The question of whether the media was being moral in this situation depends on the question of whether he is a hacker or a journalist. The title of a hacker receives negative backlash because whereas the title of a journalist receives positive feedback because a hacker has a very negative connotation of a criminal or even a spy whereas a journalist is seen in a positive light, of releasing truth to the public. From this, one could ask if what WikiLeaks did would be considered ethical? Was it moral for the media to cooperate? This all depends on what he did and who he is, this will make a difference and determine if it was ethical.
in any way. Also, citizens have the right to access information in all forms of media to be able to